With everything from hybridisation to genetic engineering affecting our foods, what exactly are we eating these days? We think we know what we are eating, but given the fact that food package labels are often complicated and do not always list all information about what is in our food, we really have no idea. This is more so in case of ketchup.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have admitted that there are in fact no fresh tomatoes in ketchup, just diluted tomato paste. They have also highlighted that the acceptable levels of mold contamination can be as low as 15 percent in canned tomatoes, to as high as 45 percent for ketchup. If that wasn’t enough, their established guidelines for the number of contaminants it will allow in our food supply means up to 30 fly eggs per every 100 grams of tomato sauce and up to two maggots per every 100 grams of tomato juice is, in their eyes, wholly acceptable.

Ketchup should be ketchup, but unfortunately it’s not. We have an industrialised food system which, with its relentless pressure to shave fractions of a penny off the price of its products, practically guarantees fraud, substitution and, even when those are absent, a constant driving down of the quality of the raw materials used in processed foods.It is important that we are active consumers and stop to think about the products we buy on a daily basis.